


A Midwinter Night

by Ywain Penbrydd (penbrydd)



Series: Vexation of Spirit [11]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Shadow Unit
Genre: Established Relationship, Frottage, Light Angst, M/M, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-28 03:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16715864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penbrydd/pseuds/Ywain%20Penbrydd
Summary: Our heroes go to investigate a cabin suggested to have been the last location of a victim of the 'Snow Princess', whose victims are all found frozen to death after freak shifts in the weather. Once there, they realise there's been no victim, and they've walked into a trap. Fortunately, two geniuses in a room leads to a multitude of almost bright ideas, at least one of them leading to the entirely traditional 'snowed in' result of getting very laid. For warmth. Of course.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [ambiguously_anomalous](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/ambiguously_anomalous) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Reid/Chaz 'homostatic thermoregulation'
> 
> Two skinny nerds, no body heat, and cold weather.

"Sorry, guys, but there's no way-- able to get back up there-- mounting a flamethrower on the bumper. You're gonna have to wait until we can get the forest service to-- the road, once the sun comes up. It's too close to dark to get up--" The hum on the line was high-pitched and almost deafening, Duke's words cutting in and out.  
  
"That's fucking great. We all saw how well I did with fire and lightning, and now it's ice," Chaz huffed, taking stock of exactly how fucked he and Reid were. "Is this because the _last time_ it was ice, I was laid up with the death plague, instead of being in the field? It is, isn't it."  
  
"Next question--" The phone cut out and in again. "--gonna live? Do I need to -- ambulance -- up?"  
  
"It's one night, Duke. I'll be fine. But you better show up with a pizza and a six pack, because I'm going to be an absolute asshole all the way back down this mountain, and you're going to wish you had to tell Falkner you lost me, if you don't bring me something to eat."  
  
"--think I don't -- by now? -- morning-- sun's coming--" The line went dead, and Chaz had no signal.  
  
"Shit."  
  
"I take it we're not going anywhere until tomorrow, which means we're stuck compromising the scene, because you have to eat, and there's... no heat in here." Reid looked at once resigned and completely offended by the situation.  
  
"I don't think this _is_ a crime scene." Chaz looked out the window, into the blizzard. "Not yet."  
  
"Why would we have been led to a place a murder hasn't yet been--" Reid's eyes widened, as the rest of that thought caught up with him. "Oh. Because it's a trap. _We're_ the victims. That ... would explain a few things that have been bothering me."  
  
"It's set up to look like you could easily spend a weekend here, if you just stopped to pick up propane and a can opener. And we have neither." Chaz took in the room they stood in, turning as he examined everything that remained.  
  
"We do have a can opener," Reid reminded him, crouching beside a cupboard, to examine the contents more thoroughly. "You have a multitool. You are way too much of an outdoorsman to leave home without one."  
  
"That thing's such a piece of shit, I'm not sure it qualifies. I forget it's even there. The last time I tried to use it, I bent it. But, this is an emergency, and it'll probably work well enough for one." Chaz crammed his hands into his pockets, groping for it. "Are there towels? We need to block the bottom of the door, at least. Probably the windows, too. The more wind we can keep out, the better off we'll be."  
  
Reid pointed to a standing cabinet, and Chaz started rolling towels, laying them against the windows and doors. With neither electricity nor propane, there wasn't an obvious way to generate heat, so the first concern was to keep the chill out.  
  
"I hate to say it, but we might be better off in the bathroom," Reid pointed out. "It's a smaller space to keep warm."  
  
"It's also entirely porcelain and there's a window. I'm not sure that's actually going to help as much as you think," Chaz argued, looking at the furniture again. "And the sun's setting, so we're about to be _really_ screwed. All the gear we need is still in the trunk of the car, because we're idiots."  
  
"We're not idiots." Reid dragged the couch away from the window it was under, turning it and pushing it against a windowless wall. "Duke was only supposed to be gone an hour, and it was snowing, but it wasn't a blizzard, then. We were in the middle of what should have been a crime scene. We weren't going to get stuck _here_ \-- if anything, we were going to get stuck coming back. And if this was a crime scene, like it's trying to become as of about five minutes ago, we wouldn't want to be dragging emergency gear all over it and ruining the evidence. But, the only evidence is that there _is_ no evidence. You checked. I checked. There's nothing here. Everything's spotless. It smells like Pine-Sol and bleach, like it was bleached first and then washed again to cover the smell with something more appealing, which suggests either that there _may_ have been a victim, here, or that the Snow Princess been staying here, herself, and has just given it up."  
  
"It'll be 'so unfortunate', but 'the perils of mountain weather' if we're frozen to death in the morning," Chaz muttered, going back to the half kitchen that stretched along one wall. Everything was either in cans or needed to be cooked. No snack food. Not even trail mix. Not even instant oatmeal or mashed potatoes, which in a place like this was a little unusual. A cabin in the woods that had food in it would usually have some kind of dehydrated food, in case of ... well... things like this. But, not even a still-sealed can of apocalypse food to be found. But, the canned chilli was probably a good place to start -- protein, first -- maybe corn and navy beans after that, just to keep things interesting.  
  
"We're not going to die. It's just going to be an incredibly uncomfortable twelve hours or so." Reid folded out the sofa bed, piling every piece of cloth that wasn't in a window onto it, and shoving the seat cushions down under the tucked top sheet. If nothing else, they'd be a good buffer against the chill. The back cushions slid down to block the space between the folded out bed and the back of the sofa, meaning that was one less place to worry about losing heat to circulating air.  
  
"I'm trying very hard not to consider how uncomfortable this is going to be. For both of us." Chaz struggled to get a can open, finally grabbing the torn bit of the lid with the pliers and rolling it back. "Somewhere in the middle of this, I'm gonna turn into a real asshole. And I'm sorry about that in advance."  
  
Reid stopped trying to find the sheet with the largest area and crossed the room to put a hand on Chaz's arm. "It's not Texas. Everyone knows where we are, and Duke's already making arrangements to get us out of here. It's one night."  
  
"It's a fucking gamma playing with the weather," Chaz snapped, slamming the drawer he'd just taken a spoon out of. "The storm's not going to just _pass_. She's trying to kill us."  
  
"She's not _going_ to kill us, because she doesn't think we're going to survive the night, and we are. She set this up so that we wouldn't make it, but we will. All she thinks she has to do is keep us here for what, a day? At the most? We can do this. We've made it through worse. But, we do have to get food in you and heat in here. We can do this with no heat, but our chances for holding out longer than the night improve if we get something. Anything. The longer we can keep the ambient temperature above freezing, the better off we'll be."  
  
"Fireplace is propane, which means there's no woodpile and no axe. The heaviest blade in the building is a breadknife, and everything out there is wet. Between us, we have a grand total of two sets of keys, a flashlight, and an overhyped swiss army knife." Chaz patted his pockets hoping for something else. "And a lighter."  
  
"And a light scene kit, which still isn't much help."  
  
"There's not even any blood, so a luminol rave is right out," Chaz joked, somewhat tartly, spooning cold chilli into his mouth. "Emergency candles?"  
  
"Wax paper drawer." Reid cocked his head toward the kitchen.  
  
Chaz's eyes crossed, and he blinked a few times. "... Those are all English words, but are you sure they're the ones you wanted?"  
  
"The drawer that should hold foil, waxed paper, and plastic wrap. It's three rolls wide. In this case, it holds emergency candles, but no matches, and batteries, but no flashlight." Reid caught Chaz's eye. "It's supposed to look complete, until you try to use it, just like the rest of this place. Unfortunately for the Snow Princess, whoever she is, we have a lighter, a flashlight, and a can opener. It's not everything, but it's a lot more than we thought we had five minutes ago."  
  
Chaz stared out the window -- one deep breath and then the next, the sick chill of being trapped again melting against the inside of his skin. This was better. There was food, at least. There was at least one blanket. He wasn't chained to anything. Ways this situation could be worse? Too many to list, and he'd lived through a lot of them, getting here. Reid was right. It wasn't that bad, but it still made him nervous in ways that almost made sense, right up until they didn't.  
  
"Peel the labels off the cans." He stepped past Reid to swap the empty can for the one saucepan they'd found and plugged the sink drain. "I'll be right back."  
  
"What are you--"  
  
"And check that the flue is open. We're setting something on fire."  
  
"How--"  
  
Chaz slipped out the door, pulling it firmly shut behind him, before Reid could finish the sentence.  
  
Ten minutes later, Chaz returned, with an armful of damp, dead pine sticks and a pot of snow, to find Reid sitting smugly beside a pile of crumpled newspaper. He dumped the snow into the sink and brought the sticks back to the fireplace.  
  
"Newspaper? Excellent! Where'd we miss that?" he crouched, laying the sticks into a frame for a small fire, on the stone of the fireplace. Nothing to rest the wood on, but he could tell it had originally been a woodburning fireplace, before it was converted.  
  
"The flue was closed, but it was also packed with paper. And it's been there for quite some time. The dates are from three summers ago. I photographed the pages and the removal. I think we'll be forgiven for destroying evidence, in this particular set of circumstances." Reid glanced over his shoulder. "What's the snow for?"  
  
"We have no heat. That means we probably don't have running water. Either the water's turned off for the season, or the pipes have burst, because the ground out there is frozen. If it's off, I'm not sure turning it on is actually going to help, and we're going to do massive damage if _we_ burst a pipe trying to get it working." Chaz teased out a page of the newspaper, profoundly dry and crisp, and shoved the crumpled mass under the sticks.  
  
"Right." Reid sighed and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. "Empty toilet." Looking around the room, again, a plan began to take shape in his head. "Scene kit's yours. Do we have... a stapler? Paper clips, maybe? Mounting pins?"  
  
"What are you thinking? I know there's at least paper clips." A flick of the lighter, and Chaz stuck an emergency candle to the hearth with its own drippings.  
  
"We should turn the couch, so it crosses the fire. Even if that's as big as the fire gets, smoke goes up, heat comes out. Two or three sheets pinned together, somehow, should be enough to trap some of the heat, without having to move the couch close enough to catch a spark."  
  
"I like the way you think." Chaz paused, amusement tugging at his lips. "You know Duke's gonna flip when he finds us in bed together, tomorrow morning."  
  
"In bed together is a perfectly reasonable thing to be, under the circumstances. And we could just get out of bed when we hear the snowplough." Reid took one end of the sofabed and waited until Chaz held the other to start turning it.  
  
"I'd rather see his face." Watching the floor, Chaz pulled his end of the sofabed back a bit, opening a little more space between it and the hearth. "Besides, even if we do try to get up when we hear the plough, it's going to take a few minutes to refasten all those buttons and zippers..."  
  
"I'm sure _he's_ been found in weirder positions than sharing body heat to keep from freezing."  
  
"I have absolutely no doubt about that, and some of those stories might even be true. Except the ones about his wife, because he's never been married. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that." Chaz looked at his hands, debating whether he'd do more harm than good, if he went back outside. Frostbite would be a real bitch, but not having another pile of small branches ready to go, if the first ones caught, would be a total waste. "You get the tent-thing going, and I'll try for some more wood and clean snow?"


	2. Chapter 2

By the time it was too dark for Chaz to try again, he'd dragged in most of what he could tear off the half a tree killed by lightning along the road, none of it dry enough to burn as it was, but they'd gotten a tiny fire started, and the first wood had begun to burn, the next load ringing the inside of the fireplace, ready to be propped atop the flames. The two of them lay along the sofabed, Chaz closer to the fire, with his knees up a bit, so his feet wouldn't stick off the end, and Reid behind him, watching the flames over his shoulder. Empty cans were stacked under the bottom of the sofabed and full cans under the top. The only thing they'd have to get up for was if they ran out of water... or if they drank too much of it.  
  
"So, for future reference, this was almost a good idea. The smoke's still pretty bad, but the heat's definitely staying put," Reid observed, leaning over Chaz to take a cup of melted snow off the hearth.  
  
"What if we fold back the middle of the top, where we've got it under the clock? Smoke should rise and the pressure should keep too much cold air from coming down."  
  
"It's got potential," Reid admitted. "Are you getting up, or am I?"  
  
"I'd be getting up either way," Chaz reminded him, reaching into the fire with the metal ruler from the scene kit, one hand still gloved, to lower some more wood, before he got up to fix the top of the makeshift tent that was much too short for either of them to stand under. He waved smoke toward the gap and hoped for the best. "We don't have a lot of wood, but we can only start a fire a limited number of times, before we run out of paper."  
  
"So, keep it small, but don't let it go out." Reid nodded, sipping the godawfully pine-flavoured water. The sap smoked horribly, and the wood popped and spit with it.  
  
"Burn just what we need." Chaz eased himself back up onto the bed, landing flat to avoid hitting the tent. "Have I mentioned I fucking hate pine fires? I'm going to smell like this for a week."  
  
"A certain third party would be bemoaning the damage to his hair, already. It's a good thing we didn't bring him." Reid stretched again, setting the cup as close to the hearth as he could reach. The warmth was more important than the taste.  
  
"He'd be warm."  
  
"He'd be another gamma. We can feed _you_. We can't feed _both of you_ ," Reid reminded him.  
  
"Shit." Chaz huffed and closed his eyes, just to keep the pine smoke out of them for a bit. "Hey, does this count as a vacation? Your team's always after you to take one... We're in a cabin in the woods, huddled close by the fire. There's probably going to be some getting partially undressed, maybe a little kissing. It sounds like one of those upper middle class things to do with a cold weekend."  
  
"Have either of us ever been upper middle class?"  
  
"Does it matter? We can pretend." Chaz put on the most ridiculous sounding accent -- something very upper-class and Massachusetts. "Oh, yes, haha, it's always been a secret fantasy of ours, snowbound for the weekend. No one dropping in unexpectedly. Give the servants the day off. We'll just eat leftovers and spend the day in bed, fulfilling the rest of our... secret fantasies."  
  
Reid laughed so hard he coughed, which wasn't so hard, with the way the smoke hung in the air around them. "Secret fantasies, huh?"  
  
"Do we even have any of those left?" Chaz asked, knowing damn well there were things he'd kept the hell out of Reid's head.  
  
"Probably." Reid shrugged off the question a little too casually.  
  
Chaz's eyebrows raised, his lips quirked in a question he decided not to ask. Instead, he rolled over and stretched to pull down another stick. They were going through it too fast, but there was nothing to be done -- pine burned fast, and when the widest branches that would dry were the width of two fingers, it burned even faster.  
  
"Want to start with the not-so-secret ones, and see where we end up?"  
  
"Not if we're going to knock the sheet down and lose what heat we have."  
  
"I can be careful! I am, occasionally, an entirely competent human being, most especially when my life is at stake." Chaz put on his very best scandalised face, which was actually pretty good.  
  
"Five or ten minutes between sticks, right?" Reid squinted at the fire across Chaz's still coat-clad chest.  
  
"Probably, yeah." With a bit of squirming, Chaz produced his phone, currently set to airplane mode, so it wouldn't waste more battery than necessary. "Just gonna set a timer, so I can get thoroughly distracted and not screw anything up. Maybe some screwing, but no screwing _up_."  
  
"You know if you stay in that position, any screwing you do is going to be up," Reid teased, with a straight face.  
  
"You'd have to take off your boots, and I don't advise it." Chaz shrugged, shoulders catching on the sheet under him, before he rolled onto his side to face Reid, leaving his phone on the arm of the couch. "Not that I'm sure anything we've done tonight is advisable."  
  
"We're making the best of a bad situation. None of this is advisable, because none of it should be _necessary_." Reid moved his hand slowly, uncertainly, as he reached out to brush Chaz's hair out of his face. "And speaking of things that are unnecessary..."  
  
"Considering some less-ascetic indulgences?" Chaz turned Reid's own long-standing description on him.  
  
"Maybe." Reid tilted his head up, expectantly, watching Chaz's eyes, until their lips met.  
  
The temptation sharpened its fangs on Chaz's nerves. He wanted to feel this from both sides, this slow, uncertain kiss, as if they were starting all over again, as if they'd never done this before. Hot breath against his lips was always better from both sides, the way it always made their breathing sync, the way they became something together that was more than either of them. But, there wasn't enough here to sustain that particular indulgence. However much he wanted it, he preferred survival -- and without the burnout nausea and headache. There would be time enough after this case, once they were back home, instead of stuck in a fucking blizzard with barely enough food. He'd live. He'd been through worse. He'd just be bitchy about it, which was definitely something he didn't want to share with Reid.  
  
"Distracted," Reid murmured against Chaz's lips.  
  
"Am not." When in doubt, deny everything. Chaz ran a hand up Reid's leg, mostly for the warning it would offer as to his intent, and stopped at the top, cupping Reid's ass and pulling him closer. "Keep me warm?"  
  
Reid's lips finally parted for something other than a word, and the kiss turned wet, sucking and nibbling, flicks of tongue that felt like they could scorch the sun. His hips rolled, not quite pressing against Chaz with the amount of jacket between them, and his breath stuttered at that failure, a broken gasp that drew the air from Chaz's mouth.  
  
The sound, the sensation, and Chaz lost his grip on anything outside the lover in his arms. His lover. His smoking hot lover from Down the Hall, who was just as smart as he was (which was a nice change, if he was honest with himself, even if the reflexive profiling was occasionally terrifying). How long had they been doing this? Months, now, at least. And he kept waiting for something to go wrong. Something always went wrong. As he tried to nudge his knee between Reid's legs, the alarm went off. That counted, right? He could live with that level of 'wrong'.  
  
With a groan, he pulled away and stretched off the bed, reaching for the ruler to drag down more wood. It wasn't going to last nearly long enough, but if they could just keep the temperature up for a few hours... Reid's icy hand slid under Chaz's coat and shirt to splay across his belly, and Chaz yelped, dropping the ruler and nearly falling off the bed, trying to move away from the chill.  
  
"Cold! Cold cold cold!" Chaz slapped at Reid's hand.  
  
"I am not that cold!" Reid protested, pulling his hand back and feeling the change in temperature.  
  
"I'm closer to the fire and your hands are always cold anyway!"  
  
"So are yours!"  
  
"Okay, that's fair," Chaz admitted, picking up the ruler to try again. Even after all these years, he could feel the stretch and grind in his shoulders, not quite audible through all the layers, but no less obvious to him. Eventually, he reached far enough to knock another stick into the fire, before pulling himself back onto the bed.  
  
He grabbed Reid's hands, pressed the palms together, and shoved them between his own thighs, cushioned with a thermal underlayer. "There. Now you can stop having cold hands, before you try to stick them anywhere else."  
  
"I think you're going to cut off the circulation in my fingers." Reid sounded entirely amused at the situation. "And that's not going to make them any warmer."  
  
Glancing back at the fire, Chaz reset the alarm on his phone, setting it back on the arm of the couch, before he reached down and hauled the heaviest blanket over them both -- which he'd been trying to avoid. There was no sense in overheating, now. The chill would be that much nastier, when the fire went out, if they'd sweat through anything. But, he unzipped his coat and pulled Reid's hands up to his chest, over his shirt, this time. "Better?"  
  
"Much better." Leaning into the warmth, Reid unzipped his own coat, and then zipped the open edge to Chaz's, before pulling his arm out of the sleeve and curling it between them. The nice thing about wearing Bureau-issue coats in the same size was that they'd do that. "And now you don't have to worry about the blanket."  
  
"I'm going to drop you on the floor, if I have to reach for the fire," Chaz pointed out.  
  
"So, unzip it first." Reid shrugged the shoulder he wasn't laying on.  
  
"How much newspaper is left?" Chaz closed his eyes, calculating.  
  
"We only used one sheet. The rest is pushed back under the bed, so the sparks won't hit it, and there's still most of the sports section. If we were trying to light one fire a day, we'd run out of food, before we ran out of kindling."  
  
"We're going to run out of food anyway."  
  
"Fortunately, eating is mostly optional, for me, so that's yours."  
  
"Tall, blond, and reckless told me to make sure you actually remembered to eat." Chaz's eyes opened.  
  
"I remember just fine. I'm just not taking food out of your mouth, because I can afford it, and you can't." Reid looked right into those eyes, almost the same colour in this light, at this distance, and Chaz raised the arm he was laying on to take Reid's hand.  
  
"Hey! Less cold!" A faint smile twisted Chaz's lips in passing. "Just eat a can of peas or something. Then I can tell him I saw you eat, and I won't be lying."  
  
"You won't be lying, once we get back down from here. We're getting takeout, and I will fucking fight you for my tenth of it."  
  
"Fifth of it. I don't eat _that_ much. Besides, Duke's bringing pizza, so, quarter of it, maybe, by the time we hit town and _you_ get food." Chaz licked the end of Reid's nose, just to watch him sputter and recoil, still caught in the shared coats. "I'm thinking about letting the fire go out, for now. It's smoky as hell in here, and it's warm enough that we can keep from freezing for a few hours, before it's going to be smart to light it again. Maybe we can get some sleep, while the getting's good?"  
  
"I'm not sure how comfortable I am sleeping with a serial murderer semi-actively trying to kill me," Reid admitted, hand wedged between their faces to wipe his nose.  
  
"Then keep me warm, so I can sleep. I can't handle the smoke, and the more I sleep, the less I eat. Of course, staying asleep is ..." Chaz trailed off with an annoyed eye-roll.  
  
"Is that a suggestion for me to make sure you're tired enough to stay asleep?"  
  
"No, but I'm not going to object to anything that takes my mind off the smoke. It smells like a forest fire, in here."  
  
Reid winced, picking up the rest of that thought. "Right. Well, I'm pretty sure I can keep your mind on other things -- statistics on income levels that lead to flood-plain residences, the price of gas in Outer Mongolia..."  
  
"I'm supposed to be eating _less_." Chaz finally freed one arm from the sleeve he wasn't laying on, pulling the end of Reid's empty sleeve into it.  
  
"Oh, right. I see I'll have to make sure you don't over-exert yourself." A wry smile settled on Reid's face.  
  
"I walked right into that."  
  
"You did."


	3. Chapter 3

Don't sweat had been the cardinal rule, but now seemed more like a suggestion, the two still dressed beneath a pile of sheets, towels, and a blanket, coats zipped together, and pressed tight enough together that the air had become noticeably humid. The rest of the rules seemed to have stayed intact -- no cold hands on skin, shoes stay on, nothing strenuous enough to require food or knock loose the sheet that kept the warm air in. And the warm air was fading, outside the blanket pile.  
  
Outside, the winds howled, whistling against the porch rails and loose shingles, as the snow rose higher against the walls, where it had blown. Reid tried to tell himself it sounded worse than it was, but the problem with having a good grip on statistics and probability was that he knew exactly how bad this was and what was going to happen if they were up here more than maybe two days. But, the longer and harder the storm whipped around the cabin, the less faith he had that anyone would get to them quickly.  
  
"Now who's distracted?" Chaz murmured against his lips, faintly amused.  
  
"I don't know the sounds well enough," Reid excused himself, tugging Chaz's leg higher up over his own, shifting his thigh to press distractingly against Chaz. "I keep thinking I'm hearing other things."  
  
"Door opening, gun cocking, wendigo..." Chaz rocked his hips against Reid's thigh, one palm pressed against the fly of Reid's trousers, the fingers of the other hand rubbing gently behind Reid's ear, hair wrapped loosely around them. If there was something they disagreed on, it was hair pulling -- Chaz loved it, made the most incredible sounds for a tight grab, a desperate yank, but Reid just shut down completely at the same. They'd almost gotten past the difficulty of that, in relation to some things they very much both agreed on. "Could've done without the wendigo."  
  
"Read that one. Everyone could've done without the wendigo, as much as that was a fascinating insight into repeated colonial misinterpretation of facts no one was prepared to accept." Reid's shiver had nothing to do with the temperature, and he pressed his lips firmly to Chaz's, just to get his mind off the subject.  
  
Chaz caught Reid's lip in his teeth. "People are never ready for this shit. Why do you think there's a law that says I don't exist? Short road to Idlewood, if I say I'm real."  
  
"You're real." Reid pulled his lip back and dove back into the kiss, tense flicks of tongue interrupted by a few words at a time, until sentences formed, thick with the combination of his own dread and the lust that hung between them. "Other people see you, talk to you. You are not a figment of my imagination, however much I question that, at times."  
  
Holding onto Reid's hair, because he knew Reid wouldn't pull, Chaz leaned back until he could put enough space to see, even if he had to close an eye to focus. "Spencer, I'm absolutely real. I'm just as real as you are. And we're both here. You're not that kind of crazy."  
  
"Still crazy, just not that kind," Reid drawled.  
  
"You're an academic. I'm pretty sure that's a basic qualification for academia, past a certain point. You're an academic; I jump off cliffs. We're both fucking nuts, and we're both here, and I'm relatively sure I can prove we're not the same person unless and until we want to be." A small smile curved Chaz's lips. "And as much as I want to be, right now..."  
  
"I'd feel safer, but we can't afford it," Reid agreed, pulling Chaz back toward him.  
  
"Hypervigilance not enough? Try hypervigilance _squared_!" Chaz snorted, utterly failing to get a lid on the snicker that followed.  
  
"Doubled, not squared," Reid argued, rolling his hips and grinding against Chaz's palm.  
  
"I have to dispute that. We are so much more together than we are in the same room." Untangling his fingers from Reid's hair, Chaz moved his hand down. The sharp angle of a shoulder, muffled under the puff of coat that extended down past Reid's ass. His hand finally came to rest on the back of Reid's thigh, holding it against him as he closed the last inch between them to finish the kiss they'd been distracted from.  
  
The thing Reid had noticed about the way Chaz kissed was that there was always that second or two of polite uncertainty, the easy out, and well-worn, as if he expected it to be used, as if he were entirely accustomed to people walking out in the middle of things. Although, if Reid were honest with himself, he was exactly the sort to do it, not that he had. Not with Chaz, anyway. And then there was just raw need, and even without the mirror, Reid could feel it in the way Chaz pressed against him, the way his breathing turned slow and hard, as he tried to keep it steady and inaudible, but losing both battles, and the way Chaz held himself just barely back, the last trace of uncertain pride, letting Reid close that bare breath's space between them, what little of it remained.  
  
And Reid did close that gap, without so much as a second thought, once he noticed it, and Chaz started to relax, as much as it was possible to relax while trapped in an unheated cabin in the middle of Northeast Buttfuck, surrounded by miles of blizzard. It still didn't sit quite right with him that this... whatever the hell they had was working, that Reid wanted anything to do with him, never mind _this_. If they were the 'evil twins', so called by almost everyone, at this point, then he was the broken one, damaged goods, less able to hold the mask than Reid seemed to be, and definitely so much more scarred, so much more _visibly_ scarred, even at a glance. He was the monster, too, but Reid seemed to have a taste for the anomalous. The other one was just... less dangerous. And he wondered again how Reid, after everything, and so closely exposed to them, hadn't turned.  
  
 _The lucky one. The favoured son._  
  
Chaz slapped that line of thought down and stopped holding himself back, relief flooding through him as Reid enthusiastically accepted every touch, every breath, every flick of tongue, his hands clutching at what of Chaz he could get a hand on, with how they were twisted together. It would end in grief, it always ended in grief -- for both of them -- but it wouldn't end here, it wouldn't end now. They'd make it through this, if only so he'd have to explain it to Duke, in the morning. As Reid's fingers twisted into his hair, again, iron grip pulling his head to the side as those fingers curled, Chaz found himself grateful for the turtleneck Reid was trying to tug down without using his teeth. At least he wouldn't have to explain the line of hickeys he so badly wanted Reid to give him.  
  
In a word, disgusting, and Reid knew it. Knew he shouldn't be doing this, not here, not now, even as he pressed his mouth against Chaz's neck. They could've waited until they'd gotten back down the mountain, to where things like soap and a change of clothes were more than just a fantasy. But, they'd be busy, then. They'd be surrounded by people. Here, there was nothing else to do, and about a twenty-percent chance they weren't getting out of this in the same number of pieces they'd gone in. It was reckless, but not particularly stupid, which was a step up from choices he'd made in other circumstances he'd seen no way out of. This wasn't something new. They'd been some sort of 'together' nearly since the day they'd met. Actually and factually since the day they'd met, if one counted the baring of memory over cakes and coffee, which he'd never been quite sure he should. This would be as comfortable as he could let it become, under the circumstances.  
  
And with that thought, he rolled over, dragging Chaz with him, the coats twisting around them in a way he was sure would be a problem, later. They weren't quite the same height, but they were close enough, and the places they weren't touching, by the time they came to rest would've been impossible even if they were.  
  
"I want you in ways neither of us should even be thinking about, right now." Reid breathed the words into Chaz's mouth.  
  
"If we hit paradoxical undressing, I'll let you have at least one of those," Chaz joked as Reid's leg wound around his own. He rocked his hips and felt the stuttered breath drawn straight from between his lips, as Reid writhed, tugging his hair and grinding up against him, rock hard under the double layer of thermals. "When we get down from here, we're taking a shower. And I want you in my mouth, in my mind. I want to hear you get loud, like you do when there's no one else to hear you."  
  
There was another sentence, but it was lost to a sloppy, demanding kiss, the slide of lips and tongues punctuated by the occasional clack of teeth, as Reid pulled harder at Chaz's hair at inadvisable moments. And this was perfect, as far as Chaz was concerned. Getting Reid to _shake hands_ without flinching was hard mode, and everyone knew it, and every time Reid pulled his hair, licked his skin, Chaz just felt illimitably smug about it. And outrageously turned on. Little signs of Reid's desire just went straight to his cock, every time, and this time was no different, the electric thrill lancing straight through him, tingling against the inside of his skin.  
  
They could take hours, together. They _had_. But, this wasn't the time for it, not with the storm rattling the windows, with the way they both started at every new noise, keeping themselves as quiet as possible to make sure they could hear those sounds. This wasn't the time for a long, leisurely fuck, the way they both enjoyed, not least because the floor beside the bed wasn't piled with donut boxes.  
  
There would be time for that, when they got back down the mountain. This would be quick, if cautious -- an affirmation they were still alive, despite the circumstances, a reminder that they intended to stay that way. This was teeth and tongue and pressure, and as quiet as they were, the sofabed still squeaked like a rusty gate in a stiff wind, until Chaz just gave up on subtlety, figuring that being done sooner was better than dragging it out trying to avoid the unavoidable noises. Faster, now, harder, listening for every near-silent sound of encouragement from Reid, focusing on every flex of that leg wrapped around his own, every tense twitch of Reid's hand in his hair.  
  
"Spencer--" he breathed, biting his tongue against any words that might follow, as Reid held him tighter, pulled him closer, panting and gasping.  
  
Reid nearly melted, or that's how it felt from the inside, the sweat breaking across his skin immediately gone as it met the first thermal layer, the sudden heat that licked through every part of him, and the sudden ache from the chill being driven out of his fingers. He felt loose and liquid, squeezed and sloshed, and spilled, and oh, that last was very real, and he was probably going to regret it in an hour, but right now, all that mattered was Chaz panting against his cheek, rutting and grinding against him, no longer able to hold a rhythm.  
  
By the time Chaz could feel his lips again, they were both substantially more damp than they'd started, which was not a good thing to be, in the cold. Or in skin-tight thermals. And he knew enough to be sure they were both going to regret this decision, shortly.  
  
Reid nudged Chaz with his hip. "You should try to get some sleep."  
  
"So I'm not a raging bitch when Duke gets here. Right."   
  
It took a few tries, but they managed to roll over, putting Reid on the side with the now-dead fire. It was easier to get up, from there, if anything happened.  
  
"I'll be here," Reid promised, not that it was ever in question. "We'll be fine."

* * *

The storm broke just before dawn, retreating into the weather of the surrounding area -- a cool, crisp, cloudless day, by the time the sun rose. Still freezing, but definitely less threatening. They built another fire, just to shake off the chill of having slept, and folded the bed back into the couch, cramming themselves awkwardly onto it, in some impression of near-comfort. Breakfast, at least, was warm.  
  
Chaz turned his phone back on, somewhere around the last can of peas, and as it occurred to him to do it, there was a knock at the door.  
  
"You kids should let me in." Duke only had to raise his voice slightly, to be heard through the door. "I don't want to have to take this door off, and then find out I should've come up with an ambulance!"  
  
By the time he finished the sentence, Reid was at the door, unlocking it, Chaz still sitting on the couch, behind him, with his gun in one hand and a half-empty can of green beans in the other.  
  
"Brady's waiting in the car, in case something went wrong," Duke said, reaching back to turn off the valve on his obviously-improvised flamethrower, a path of what was now wet ice carved through the snow behind him. "But, the gamma..."  
  
"She's dead, isn't she?" Chaz stood up, putting away the gun, not noticing the way his collar slid down at the motion.  
  
Reid watched Duke's eyes take in the edge of a bruise, and neither of them said anything about it.  
  
"I'd think she froze to death in the snow, but I know that look. I know that _smell_."  
  
Chaz's eyes squeezed shut, and he took a long, slow breath. "Where'd you find her?"  
  
"Between the road and the door. She was coming in to finish the job. Didn't plan ahead."  
  
"Probably hadn't figured that part out, yet." Chaz pressed the heel of his palm against his eye and nodded. "We should go. Brady better not be eating my pizza."  
  
"If Brady doesn't know enough not to touch your food, by now, he deserves whatever he gets."  
  
"Crime scene's going to want to go over the whole house," Reid pointed out, as he pulled the door shut behind them. "The only fingerprints are ours, though. We checked everything before the storm started. But, we made some interesting observations I'll be happy to include in the report I'll compose as soon as I can take my gloves off. I assume her death will be attributed to the cold?"  
  
"That's up to Frost, not me." Duke shrugged, and it took Reid a moment to remember the consulting pathologist's name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is entirely unedited. If I've been an idiot, and you spot it, plz tell me. I'll take a crack at cleaning it up later in the week. I just need it off my desk.


End file.
